


Voice of Corypheus

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [21]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dark Past, Drabble, Emotional, Gen, Team as Family, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15564633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A former Venatori who has miraculously wound up as the Herald of Andraste hears the voice of former his master again when exploring the Temple of Dumat to solve the mystery of Calpernia's role in the grand scheme... And almost falters.





	Voice of Corypheus

He touches the memory crystal, and it hums under his hesitant fingertips, sleek and throbbingly hot like his son’s feverish forehead on the… bad days… And, just for a moment, he is petrified, lulled into an awestruck stupor by his former master’s voice again.  
  
Deep, rumbling, slightly warped by the crystal’s magic, the voice wraps around him in serpentine coils, murmuring mismatched musings about the old glory of Tevinter, and about the merciless darkness and soul-crushing, indifferent silence of the world - the darkness and silence that once threatened to shatter his skull, as nothing he did, no desperate experiments he tried, succeeded in bringing his family back.  
  
The voice speaks of Calpernia, a slave girl with a burning, searching heart, who was so utterly lost before Corypheus came and extended his hand to her. Oh, how mesmerized she must have been, by the would-be god’s unfathomable presence, by his promise to reforge Tevinter, to turn around its destiny, and her own - as he himself was once mesmerized. As he is still mesmerized even now, with the crystal radiating entrapped memories, casting his frozen, bloodless face into a raw crimson glow.  
  
‘Hey Archie, you all right?’ another voice, husky and earthen and as grounded in reality as its owner, calls to him from behind his back - and he remembers.  
  
Remembers that his plan to turn back time, so that there would be no interlopers during Corypheus’ ascension, backfired on him, and he now bears the Anchor that was to have been removed.  
  
Remembers that the Venatori have no hold over him now - that he serves the Inquisition, as best as a disgraced ex-cultist can.  
  
Remembers that the people standing behind him, as watchful, anxious shadows, have always stood behind him, firmer and firmer as he got himself into more and more misadventures as the reluctant Herald of Andraste. That these people are… family, for all intents and purposes. More family than he could ever hope to have, could ever hope to save. The smart-mouthed dwarf who calls him Archie (short for Archon); his former apprentice, now an incredibly accomplished mage in his own right, and one of his many partners in the continued research of the Blight cure (now far less frantic, for his boy is safe); the very girl he once tried to erase from existence… And so many, many more - those who wait for him back at Skyhold, those who trust him to return with answers, with reassurance, with tropheys of his victories over evil. And with an embrace and a deep, slow kiss, which are reserved, respectively, for his son (safe! safe! so close to being healed!) and Seeker Cassandra. The woman who would never replace his dead wife - nor is meant to - and yet fills his heart with a light far stronger, far clearer, far purer, than the blinding contaminated glow of these cursed crystals.  
  
‘No, I am not all right,’ he says curtly. ‘But I will be once we are done here’.


End file.
